Every now and then one of your virtual server”s C:\ drive will get close to filling up. Windows 2003 and earlier don”t make it that easy to expand the size of the boot partition. Luckily, by using some built-in VMWare tools and a handy GParted Live CD we can still make this happen without reformatting.

First, shut down the virtual guest with the full hard drive. Once it”s shut down, commit any snapshots to disk by deleting all snapshots in the snapshot manager.

Connect to your ESX server host via console or ssh, and navigate to the directory where the .vmdk files reside for this guest. Decide on a size that you want to increase your hard drive to. Make sure to leave room for future services packs and patches, etc.,

Replace myvmguest with the appropriate vmdk file name and replace 50g with the appropriate size for your environment.

It should only take a second or two, as all its doing is making a change to the file”s header best online casino so it thinks its now larger than it was.

Now, go grab a copy of GPARTED here. Download We reserve the right at any time, with or without cause, to:Any changes we make will be effective immediately upon our making such changes available on the Web construction-jobs.info or otherwise providing notice thereof. the ISO. In the CD-ROM Settings for your Virtual Guest, point it to the ISO you just downloaded. You may need to SCP this file to the server. Make sure its set to CONNECTED and CONNECT AT STARTUP.

Now power on the virtual guest, but quickly get keyboard control and hit ESC to choose another boot device. Choose CD and the GPARTED live CD should fire up.

Answer the keyboard questions when they come up. After a minute or so, GPARTED should load up and discover your hard drives automatically.

You should see a visual representation of your boot drive now, with a bunch of free space at the endthe partition. Right-click on the partition and choose Resize/Move. Drag the slider to increase the partition to the new size. Click Resize. Click Apply at the top. Depending on the size of your partition, this may take a while. Check the progress, and when its done, quit, reboot back into Windows.